[TheFrog]

Hmm, I have to throw the BS flag. "There is new stuff, sure. But a new language or a revsion or Oracle does not obsolete the basic stuff one learns if at a decent school."

Have you used Punch Cards, tape on a "new" TI Silent 700? So you are telling me you still Oracle Forms 2.0?
Do you still write DOS batch files, ALGOL?
How many of the 200 programming languages that existed in 1960 are still in use today?
Do you even know who Grace Murray Hopper is?

Hint when I obtained my first degree Interactive System Corp. had just started selling Unix commercially.

[bvw]

A binary sort is binary sort no matter what the language is. Most people who can program well in any particular language, can quickly program in any other language. What makes a good program is not the syntax, not the grammar.

I have used punch cards, paper tape, teletypes, wire recorders, tape recorders, real magnetic core memory, the front panel, the back panel, patch panels, mechanical sorters, fortran, spitbol, cobol, algol, basic, apl, hasp, jcl, cmd, unix, fortran II, II, IV, 77, dos batch files, assemblers of any stripe, designed circuits, cpus and hydraulic systems (those have logic too), analog computers, sliderules, monographs (does anyone out there know what these are, calculation-wise?), shell scripts, word and excel macros, I've written comiplers, interpreters, debuggers, data base managers, I've programmed in forth, lisp, prolog, paschal, sql, html, vb, vc++, shell scripts, that and this.

I've learned how to design IC's, how to read a steam table, how to figure beam loads, and do heat load analysis. I can burn proms with x-rays coming out of my eyes.

All what is important to design, to analysis, and even to most of implementation is independent of the language, of the revision number.